Artificial intelligence’s many applications have the potential to change daily life for people worldwide. It also has the potential to reshape military power in the future. With China and the U.S. locked into a power struggle, this is one area where both sides have great incentive to leapfrog the other.

The deadline for China to reach the Phase 1 Trade Agreement targets has come and gone, and China has officially fallen short of its commitments. The two countries now must decide how to move forward.

Some of the Cold War experience, though it may not be an exact parallel, can be instructive. A pattern should be established to avoid dragging the world into a lose-lose scenario.

Given their mutual economic dependence, both China and the U.S. know they must manage relations. Nobody wants a new cold war. Rational countries are unwilling to choose sides, and there is great pressure for accommodation.

What should be China’s view? It should avoid competition for its own sake and avoid rhetorical pitfalls. It should also consider historical context and the needs of humanity as a whole. Competition should be managed, not malicious.

China and the United States must take the opportunity to move relations forward following the Xi-Biden virtual meeting in November. A healthy future will be discovered through frank dialogue, sincere exchanges and taking advantage of every small but concrete commitment.

Americans like to think the United States won the Cold War and they nostalgically believe the same approach will work with China. It won’t. In fact, healthy China-U.S. relations depend on Washington’s moving away from the myth.

High-level dialogues in 2021 between China and the United State clarified their positions. Now it’s imperative that the two rivals avoid a new cold war by engaging in substantive working-level talks.

Strategic competition between China and the United States should be characterized not as a new cold war but as an uneasy peace. Shooting is not likely to break out, but the two countries will remain in dread of each other in the coming decade.

In 2018, Steve Bannon, then-US President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, argued that the United States needed to “decouple” from China. Since then, the term has become a fixture in discussions of Sino-American relations – to the point that some, such as former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have warned that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How salient is that risk today?